Children’s Books of the Year
| A TIME FOR VIGILANCE: Children need their parents not only to guard against objectionable books but to promote good ones. The titles in the following pages are books to consider

by Janie B. Cheaney Posted 2/13/20, 02:46 pm

State Rep. Ben Baker, of Missouri House District 160, is concerned about the kind of books kids may encounter at the local library. “I want to be able to take my kids to a library and make sure they’re in a safe environment,” where objectionable material can’t slip by a parent’s notice. To that end, his House Bill 2044 attaches the “Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act” to a routine funding measure.

Children’s Books of the Year
| TURNING A SHACK INTO A HOME: Brightening colors help tell a story of hope amid tragedy

by Susan Olasky Posted 2/13/20, 02:39 pm

WORLD’s Picture Book of the Year is Home in the Woods by Eliza Wheeler (Nancy Paulsen Books, ages 5-8), a hope-filled, true story of a family that survives and prospers despite tragedy. Adults will appreciate the enormity of the challenges the mother faces. Children will appreciate the simple story and luminous illustrations that show a family facing difficult circumstances with resourcefulness, tenacity, love—and fun.

Children’s Books of the Year
| BECOMING A GENTLEMAN: How tragedy can produce an honorable young man

by Janie B. Cheaney Posted 2/13/20, 02:19 pm

“This book started with an image: a very formal butler standing on a stoop of a normal suburban house, on the first day of the oldest kid’s sixth-grade year, in the rain,” explained Gary D. Schmidt, author of Pay Attention, Carter Jones (Clarion Books, ages 10-12). “That whole image was there before anything else, and obviously, the question is: Why is he there?”

Children’s Books of the Year
| AGAINST THE ODDS: How God planned the steps of a girl with deformed feet

Janie B. Cheaney | 2/13/20, 01:55 pm

“Rebeka traced the shape of her curled feet through the blanket that covered her and her little sister, ­Medatrece. Everybody was asleep and she needed to go to the bathroom. She wanted to go by herself, without bothering anybody, but she was also afraid. Wild dogs roamed the Rwandan countryside after dark and could easily get into her yard.”

Children’s Books of the Year
| Painful memories, but also hope and faith, inform the work of poet Nikki Grimes

Janie B. Cheaney | 2/13/20, 01:27 pm

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

In his poem “Mother to Son,” Langston Hughes set one of his most vivid images. It might also describe the early life of another poet whose climb out of childhood was similarly studded with tacks, splinters, and “boards torn up.” In her teens a friend asked Nikki Grimes how she could still believe in God. “What kind of question is that? How could I not? If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t even be here. I’d either be in prison, or the grave” (Ordinary Hazards).

Children’s Books of the Year
| Four outstanding novels for teens

Janie B. Cheaney | 2/13/20, 01:20 pm

Lovely War

by Julie Berry

Children’s Books of the Year
| Picture books of the year: Top choices show imagination, nobility

Susan Olasky | 2/14/19, 02:21 pm

Last January our committee of seven started on a hunt to find a picture book worthy of being WORLD’s Picture Book of the Year for 2018. Our mission: to find a book beautiful to look at, appealing to children, and full of wisdom.

Children’s Books of the Year
| Children’s novels of the year: When the ordinary becomes extraordinary

Janie B. Cheaney | 2/14/19, 02:19 pm

In Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier (Amulet, ages 10-14), Nan Sparrow’s first memories are of the gentle, quiet man who adopted her as an abandoned infant and taught her his trade. The Sweep added love and imagination to a life that, for most 19th-century chimney climbers, was unrelievedly grim. But now he’s gone, his only legacy a lump of charcoal that Nan can’t bring herself to toss away. Maybe it’s good luck, and she needs all the luck she can get working for Wilkie Crudd, the most heartless master in London.

Children’s Books of the Year
| Children’s nonfiction book of the year: One theologian’s struggle to understand God and defeat Hitler

Janie B. Cheaney | 2/14/19, 02:18 pm

Few “Christian heroes” attract the admiration of the modern age more than Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His courage in standing up to an obvious evil like Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, his devotion to his family, and his musical and literary gifts are all virtues anyone, secular or religious, can appreciate. But our nonfiction winner presents a figure few secular readers can grasp: a man smitten by God from an early age. Perhaps the most sensitive treatment of this life can only come from an author or illustrator with similar leanings.

Indeed, shortly after the election of 2016, the publishing world rose up with cries of “Resist!” Dozens of children’s authors expressed their dismay, followed shortly by determination to push back against this new wave of supposed racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Within months, books aimed at encouraging teen activism were rolling off the presses.

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Children’s Books of the Year | A TIME FOR VIGILANCE: Children need their parents not only to guard against objectionable books but to promote good ones. The titles in the following pages are books to consider